Saturday, December 16, 2006

First off, I'm sorry I've been away for so long. House/Computer/Time issues shouldn't be excuses, so I'm just going to leave it at "sorry - please forgive me".

Moving forward:

I'd like to lead off today with a story that recently caught my eye, regarding the fate of Scotland's Grey Squirrel population. In a project approved by the Scottish Ministers, Grey Squirrels in select areas are being given contraceptives in an effort to slow their rampant population growth. This comes after the previous method of "cranial dispatch" (described bluntly as a sharp blow to the head) went out of favor.

The animals have spread across Scotland's woodlands in recent years and are becoming a threat to Red Squirrel populations and the sanity of many rurally situated humans. The biggest fear is that the contraceptives will be ingested by other animals - like the native Footballius Hoodlumus - prompting swift drops in the population level of species NOT threatening the ecosystem. Yep.

_____

In other news, an Aussie wildlife worker pulled a 7' python out of some woman's john. He's quoted as saying "Crikey! The hell did you do, piss that thing out?"...or something to that effect.

_____

Finally today, let's head to Florida, where 3 million (no, that's no a typo) bees were removed from a home in Miami Beach, along with the 66 lbs of honey left in their wake. I'll cut & paste the rest, because it just plain speaks for itself: "The bees appeared two years ago and the owner had been telling a TV crew how they had failed to get rid of them when he ran from the house, yelling: 'They're biting me!'"

Like sands through the hourglass, blah blah blah.

See you in the funny pages...(feels all kinds of good to type that again)

PS - the pic up top is from NASA's image of the day archive...the 2nd best RSS feed out there - period.